Monday, November 16, 2015

Hey kids! Just a reminder that if you haven't picked it up already,
the complete Gravedigger saga (to date), is available as digital
editions through comiXology and in a trade paperback collection that can be purchased at your local comic shop (hopefully) or through sites like Amazon and InStockTrades.

No matter where you buy (or already bought) the book from, we'd really
appreciate it if you took a few minutes to review Gravedigger on Amazon.
We'd really like to produce another adventure, and the more books we
sell, the better the chance of a sequel. Reviews are extremely helpful... and
sincerely appreciated. Thanks!

Sunday, November 08, 2015

For the last couple years, as I've teased Peter Grau'sSpace Crusaders
prelim art, I've promised that I'd share more details about the project
once we'd made some significant headway on pages. Well, now that we've
got some momentum going, I thought it it was time to reveal a bit more
about the project to you folks.

Space Crusaders is the working
title of a "double feature" graphic novel that resurrects a couple of
space hero characters from the Golden Age of comics.

The artwork I've
shown so far is from the first of those two features: a 30-page
"novella" called "Menace of the Saurian Sphere," starring Dick Briefer'sRex Dexter Of Mars character, who originally appeared in Mystery Men Comics, beginning in 1939. I've long loved the Mars-born Rex Dexter
character (and his Earth girlfriend, Cynde), and thought it would be fun
to pay tribute to Briefer with a new Rex adventure.

As for the second feature and its Golden Age space ace... well, I'm going to keep that one under wraps a while longer.

Wednesday, November 04, 2015

At one point in the 1970s, Marvel Comics, unable to secure the comic book rights to Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter of Mars" stories (which were being published at rival DC), began adapting author Edwin Lester Arnold's 1905 sci-fi novel, Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, in the pages of Creatures On The Loose!

Arnold's novel was a precursor to Burroughs' interplanetary fantasies,
with a number of story similarities to the first few John Carter
adventures. Marvel drafted their top cover artist, the legendary Gil Kane,
to play up those similarities, leading to a pretty amazing run of
swashbuckling, action-packed cover illustrations.Here are a few of them:

Thursday, October 15, 2015

I've been a little negligent in updating this blog, but I wanted to let you all know that the third - and final - issue of the current Gravedigger miniseries from Action Lab Danger Zone went on sale in finer comic book shops yesterday. This issue reprints the 2004 one-shot, "The Scavengers," with all new cover art (pictured above) by artist Rick Burchett.

This issue - along with the previous two - is available digitally through ComiXology, as well. If you prefer to get your comics that way, you'll find all three issues HERE.

If you're one of those who prefers to "wait for the trade," the collection, which I've titled "Hot Women, Cold Cash," will be out soon. You can try to pre-order it from your local comic book store, or buy it online from Amazon HERE.

That's it for the time being, but if you'd like to see more Gravedigger comics from Rick and myself, be sure to let the fine folks at Action Lab know through their website and Facebook page. Thanks!

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Huh. Apparently Moonstone is collecting my three-issue Kolchak: The Night Stalker Files run from a few years back in a trade paperback with their adaptation of
the second Matheson-scripted telefilm, The Night Strangler.

This was my second Kolchak miniseries for them, after Night Stalker Of The Living Dead (collected in this volume). I'm not quite as happy with this series, for a variety of
reasons. That said, it's cool that my name is on a book cover with
Richard Matheson!

It does still bug me that they insist on billing me as "Chris," since I use my full name professionally, dammit.

I won't be seeing any money on this, I'm guessing, but if you're
interested, it will be out in December and can be pre-ordered now through Diamond Distribution.

Friday, September 04, 2015

I love getting art in my e-mail inbox! This time from another project ever-so-slowly inching its way to realization... the tentatively-titled Space Crusaders, a space opera anthology graphic novel drawn by artist Peter Grau. Peter and I have been slowly pulling it together over the last year or two, but it's starting to gain some momentum now. Once we get a solid chunk of pages together, I'll share more specifics obout the book.Got a bunch of awesome designs in the inbox this week; here's a peek!

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Okay, here's a question for the readers of this blog - and the Gravedigger crime comics that I produce with Rick Burchett. If was to publish a short Gravedigger novel or novella through Amazon, would anyone buy it?

I'm not saying I'm even able to do it - I've never written a prose work longer than a short story - but I have about 4,000 words of a Digger story that I might be able to expand.... read an excerpt below and let me know what you think. (I've written more pages than this, by the way. And I ran this excerpt here on the blog some years ago in a slightly different form. If it sounds familiar, that's why.)

When the door burst open, I put two 9mm slugs into the first man's chest. The guy behind him looked vaguely familiar, but I didn't have time to take a second look as he raised an ugly, efficient-looking machine pistol and sprayed the room with hot metal.

The slugs didn't come anywhere near me, but they ripped the hell out of the small rented cabin. I waited on the floor behind the threadbare sofa, Beretta in my right hand, and when the guy with the squirtgun emptied his magazine, I shot him in the head.

I sidled carefully over to the two bodies and looked out through the open door and across the porch at the glass-smooth lake. Pale moonlight and flickering stars were reflected in its mirrored surface, and an aluminum rowboat I hadn't seen before was tied to the short dock.

I had no concerns about the gunfire. The nearest neighboring cabin was a good half-mile away, and was, at present, unoccupied.

I pulled the bodies into the room where I could see them clearly. I had been right about the second man; I knew him. His name was Wyatt, a burly, blond Australian ex-pat I'd worked with a couple years back on a payroll job in Nevada. The other gunman was unfamiliar; a blue jean and tee-shirt wearing kid, maybe twenty-five, with short, spiky black hair and a bad complexion.

I searched their pockets. Wyatt carried I.D. in the form of a Jersey driver's license and a Visa card that said his name was Porter. The younger man had apparently been going under the name of Joe Riley. I took their I.D. and credit cards and slipped them into my shirt pocket.

I wondered how they'd found me.

And why.

I'd been living in the two-room cabin in western Maine for three weeks. Not hiding out, exactly; just resting and recreating between jobs. Once a week, I took the rented outboard across the lake, hiked a mile and a half to the clearing where I’d left my Buick, and drove another few miles on mostly dirt roads into Rangely for supplies. The rest of the time, I sat on the porch, enjoying the solitude, smoking, and reading trash paperbacks, a habit I'd picked up during my one extended stay as a guest of the state.

I didn't think I was currently on anyone's shit list, but in my business you can never know for sure. Emotions often run hot when large amounts of cash are on the line, and those who make their living acquiring it at gunpoint tend not to be overly sensitive to other people's feelings.

I tried to think who might be carrying a grudge and who also knew Wyatt. The list was short.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Considering DC Comics' recent-ish success with their Batman '66 comics, which presented new adventures of the mid-Sixties Adam West & Burt Ward television versions of Batman & Robin, it was inevitable that they'd try a Wonder Woman comic based on the Seventies TV show that starred the stunning Lynda Carter as the star-spangled heroine. Originally serialized online, the publisher has recently collected a couple of the period adventures as the Wonder Woman '77 Special!

As a fan of the 70s Wonder Woman series, I felt I had to pick this up when I saw it at a local store, despite the hefty cover price. It was a fun read, although I felt the writers and artists did an only "adequate" job evoking the TV series. In fact, reading it, I got the impression that no one involved actually was alive in the 70s!

Florentine (a former Power Rangers director!) is probably the best action director working in the indie action realm, and his previous films with Adkins have been so much better than they had any right to be. These two make a fantastic team, consistently raising the bar of what can be accomplished on low-budget, direct-to-video genre fare.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

It's been nearly a year since Gene Gonzales
and I wrapped up our (first?) Perils On Planet X adventure. This Fall,
I'm hoping we'll formulate a practical plan for getting a print edition
published. Until then, it remains complete and free to read online.

As the dog days of Summer close upon us, maybe it's a good time to re-read (or read for the first time!) the
entire Perils On Planet X "Hawke of Terra" saga... from the beginning!

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

The Gravedigger: Hot Women, Cold Cash trade paperback collection from Action Lab: Danger Zone is now available for pre-order in the August Diamond Previews catalog for October release.

"It's not easy being a bad guy, as career criminal "Gravedigger" McCrae
knows all too well. First he's framed for the murder of a mob boss's
daughter, and has to escape from an army of professional killers,
unarmed and alone. Then, he's brought in on a South of the Border arms
heist where everything that can go wrong, does. It's all about hot women
and cold cash, in this hardboiled, hard-hitting collection. Collects
the three-issue Gravedigger miniseries."

Diamond Item Code: AUG150972

UPDATE: If you can't get to a comic shop, it's also available through Amazon.

Wednesday, July 08, 2015

One of my favorite Chuck Norris vehicles has just been released on Blu-ray by Kino-Lorber: An Eye For An Eye (1981), directed by Steve Carver.

If I remember correctly, this is the last of the beardless Norris flicks (did he have a beard in the subsequent Silent Rage? Or just the 'stache? I can't recall).

Veteran exploitation director Steve Carver (Big Bad Mama, Jocks)
worked well with Norris, playing to his leading man's strengths and
shooting action scenes with a certain amount of clarity and style (They re-teamed on 1983's Lone Wolf McQuade with equally good result.) He
also knew how to fill out the supporting casts with talented, veteran
character actors, allowing Chuck to concentrate on the ass kicking
while others handled the heavy lifting, acting-wise.

In this particular film we have an all-star exploitation line-up, including Mako, Christopher Lee, Shaft's Richard Roundtree, Star Trek DS9's Rosalind Cho and Space Academy's
Maggie Cooper, all working their butts off to help make Chuck look
good in what's essentially a fairly routine cop movie with a big
"Bondian" climax.

But it's a lot of fun, and very well directed and
paced by Carver, with a standout (if too brief) battle between Chuck
and wrestler Professor Toru Tanaka. The best part of this film, though,
is the late, great Mako, who is in top form as Chuck's acerbic sensei.

The Blu-ray marks the first time the movie has been released in widescreen on domestic home video, and features an audio commentary by Carver.

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Issue #3 of Gravedigger, by Yours Truly & Rick Burchett is now available for pre-order through the Diamond Distributors' Previews catalog under the Action Lab: Danger Zone imprint! Ships in September!

When "Gravedigger" McCrae is brought in on a South of the Border arms heist, it looks like it will be an easy score. But between the charms of the beautiful Angel and all the double-and-triple crosses, Digger will be lucky to get out alive. The desert sand will run red with blood before this caper is done.

Long-time fans will recognize this as a re-presentation of the critically-acclaimed 2004 one-shot, "The Scavengers," under a brand-new cover by artist Rick Burchett! For new fans, it's an opportunity to get the first Gravedigger story in print form (as that one-shot is long, long sold out). We're really glad that Action Lab wanted to reprint this story along with "The Predators." It's probably the best-reviewed comic I've ever written, so it's going to be great having it out there again.

Monday, May 25, 2015

I saw this artwork on another website already, so I guess it's okay to share it here now: the pulp-tastic Rick Burchett cover for Gravedigger #2!

Here's the solicitation copy: On the run from the mob and the police, "Gravedigger" McCrae finds
temporary respite with a lovely, wealthy playgirl. But it doesn't take
long for his pursuers to catch up with him, and then it's no longer a
matter of outrunning them, but escape from certain death. Can Digger
outwit his adversaries in the savage conclusion to "The Predators?"

Gravedigger #2 is solicited in the June Diamond Comics Distributors' Previews catalog (Available May 27) from Action Lab: Danger Zone. The Diamond Item Code is JUN150869

Sunday, May 24, 2015

I guess the first collected edition of Neil Gaiman's Lady Justice, from Super Genius comics, is finally on the shelves of specialty shops and through online dealers like Amazon. I edited this series 20 years ago for the original publisher, TeknoComix. I was lucky to be able to employ some very talented people on the book, like Dan Brereton, Michael Netzer, Fred Harper and the late CJ Henderson, among others. I'm proud of the work we did on the title, even if it was frustrating at times, thanks to the not-always-helpful input of the powers-that-were.

As this was all work-for-hire stuff, and I was on staff with Tekno, neither I nor the various creators will be seeing any royalties on these editions, I'm guessing. Still, it's kinda nice to see these books back in print. I wonder if new publisher Super Genius will be collecting any of the non-Gaiman-inspired titles from the company? It would be cool to see the other monthly series I edited, Mickey Spillane's Mike Danger, or the Leonard Nimoy's Primortals issues I wrote, all in nice collected editions.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Here's the regular cover art for Gravedigger #1 by Rick Burchett! The May issue of the Diamond Previews catalog is out this Wednesday, and within its pages you'll find, under Action Lab Entertainment / Action Lab: Danger Zone,
the solicitation for the first issue of the Gravedigger miniseries, due
out in July. Issue #1 contains part one of "The Predators," by Yours Truly
and the amazing Rick Burchett.

Stay tuned for more details (including the product number, once I know it).

Here's a look at the limited edition variant cover for Gravedigger # 1 by Dario Briton Carrasco, with colors by Ian Sokoliwski.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Another peek at the new graphic novel-in-progress. Introducing two new additions to the Femme Noir rogues gallery: Wilhelm Skreem & E.C. “Ghastly” Gaines. (Actually, Ghastly’s appeared once before….) And both of these guys work for Madame Morella MaCabre’s “Ghoul Squad,” of course!

Friday, March 13, 2015

When I was a teenager, I was semi-addicted to the "Nick Carter: Killmaster" paperback spy novels. Written by a vast army of ghost writers, the series chronicled the adventures of American AXE agent Nicholas Huntington Carter, codenamed "N3" with a "Killmaster" rating, who routinely armed himself with a "stripped-down" Luger pistol he called Wilhelmina, a stiletto knife called Hugo, and a gas capsule named Pierre. He carried out missions around the world for his boss, David Hawk, in over 250 slim novels, published between 1964 and 1990 for Ace (later Jove) Books.

The Killmaster capers were generally action-packed, and liberally spiced with graphic sexual encounters that went far beyond anything I'd read in Ian Fleming. The quality of the individual novels varied widely, depending on which of the publisher's many ghosts were at the typewriter, and a number of different artists contributed the lurid cover art over the run of the series.

Of these artists, my favorite was George Gross, an old hand at men's adventure art, who had worked extensively for the old pulp magazines and the later, "men's sweat" periodicals. He was the primary Carter cover artist from the late 1970's and through the 80s (he also painted many covers for Warner Books' "Avenger" series around the same time). Here are a few of his Carter covers, all featuring the same unnamed model....

Tuesday, March 03, 2015

I'm pleased to announce that the Femme Noir team - Yours Truly, artist Joe Staton, inker Rick Burchett, and colorist Matt Webb - have begun production of a new Femme Noir
miniseries, "Cold, Dead Fingers." I can't say when it will be
finished, but I'm hopeful that it will be completed this year, and
probably see print in 2016. No publisher yet, but I have been having
some encouraging discussions.

To celebrate this new beginning, I
thought you folks might like to take a look at the first page of our
forthcoming supernatural crime saga. To make it more special, I'm going
to share with you the process that we employ in making our Femme Noir funnybooks.

I. It Begins With The Word:
In this case, I wrote a detailed plot, breaking down the storytelling
in some detail. No dialogue or captions as yet - I write those after I
have Joe's penciled pages in hand; as I am the letterer as well as
writer, I basically do both at the same time. Here's how the plot
described this first splash page:

PANEL 1. And
here we go…. We begin with a movie poster-styled splash page. In the
center of the image is a full-length shot of Le Femme, hat pulled down
low, guns in hands, trenchcoat whipping in the wind. Behind her is a
sketched in Port Nocturne skyline. On the left, there’s a huge,
spookily-lit “ghostly” head shot of our brutish killer – in this
iteration, he’s called “Crusher” Corrigan – and below him, a full-length
image of mad scientist Dr. Karl Boroff. On the right hand side of the
page, opposite Corrigan’s scary melon, is an equally spooky “ghost” head
of Madame Morella MaCabre. Below her, opposite of Boroff, is a
full-length figure of plainclothes dick Lt. Rod Riley, pistol drawn.

II. Joe's Deadly Pencil:
From this florid description, Joe draws the page in pencil, employing
his considerable talent and experience, working his magic:

Joe
then e-mails me a lo-res jpeg to review. Once I've looked it over, and
am sure that we're both happy with it, Joe then e-mails the page as a
hi-res image file to...

III. Putting The Noir In Femme Noir:
...inker Rick Burchett. Joe and Rick have worked together numerous
times before, perhaps most memorably on the 1980s incarnation of E-Man. In this case, Rick is applying his atmospheric blacks digitally, using his Cintique tablet.

Once
completed, Rick sends jpeg files to both Joe and I to see if we have
any notes. If everything's cool, as it is here, the image is then sent
on to our last teammate.

IV. Dangerous Hues: Colorist Matt Webb gets his hands on the page next, and with the original script for reference (and having colored several Femme Noir adventures before), Matt digitally - and dramatically - colors the page.

Nice,
huh? Once again, a lo-resolution copy of the colors is sent out for
approval of all and sundry. Then, it all comes back to me.

V. The Final Words:
With the finished page in my e-mail box, I take it into Photoshop and
fit it into the appropriate page template. Having scripted the dialogue -
or in this case, caption - when I got the pencils, I then do the
lettering in Illustrator. Finally, I drop the text in on the page back
in Photoshop... and voilà!

So that's how we do it. Repeat for pages 2, 3, 4 and so on... until the book is complete.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

The amazing Robert McGinnis, nearly 90 years-old and not missing a trick, provides this gorgeous cover for Max Allan Collins' latest "Quarry" novel from Hard Case Crime. I just got this book and it's right on top of the reading pile. Collins' "Quarry" novels, which chronicle the life of a hardboiled professional killer, are among my favorite books - and Quarry one of my favorite protagonists - in the genre.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

It was just a little over two months ago that the hardboiled crime comic that I created with artist Rick Burchett, Gravedigger, concluded its online serialization. At the time, I speculated that we wouldn't have to wait long for the character's return... and here it is.

Rick and I have just signed with Action Lab Entertainment's "Danger Zone" mature readers imprint, to bring the two existing Gravedigger sagas - "The Scavengers" and "The Predators" - to both print and digital formats in 2015. The stories will be presented in a three-issue comic book miniseries format and as a digital edition on Comixology. Action Lab will be making their own announcement soon, and there will be more details revealed then.

The release dates haven't been set yet, but you can be sure I'll be plugging the hell out of the book when the time comes!

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Back in 1997, Kitchen Sink Press published several issues of Will Eisner's The Spirit - The New Adventures, for which they invited a number of the comic industry's top talents to contribute original stories featuring Central City's masked crimebuster. A lot of great names were involved, and many of the stories were extremely good, sometimes rivaling the master's own tales. They sported some terrific covers, too - including this Brian Bolland masterpiece from Issue #3. It was also released as a limited edition print (shown below).

Monday, January 12, 2015

Well, we come at last to the final episode of A Man Called Sloane, "The Shangri-La Syndrome," directed by none other than T.R. Sloane himself, Robert Conrad, and originally airing on the 22nd of December, 1979.

I wish I could say that the series went out on a high note, but "Syndrome" is, in every way, a seriously lackluster affair.

Sloane is investigating the theft of some top secret material from Doctor Karla Meredith's (Daphne Reid)
scientific institute. A meeting with one of her (young and pretty,
'natch) researchers is interrupted by an intruder whom Sloane pursues.
By the time Sloane gets back, she is dead of apparent old age. It turns
out that Meredith is working with KARTEL and an ex-Nazi named (of
course) Hans Kruger (Dennis Cole) to clone a South American dictator.

There
are some interesting concepts in here - Kruger is being kept young by
an age-reversing formula and must stay in a hot environment to avoid
reverting his to his true age - but nothing is done with them. There's
only one gadget in this episode, and it's rather pedestrian, too.

It's
a shame that the series came out when it did. NBC in 1979 was something
of a creative wasteland, with network head Fred Silverman desperate to
attract viewers to the floundering net. His approach to this was to
program shows that were colorful, titillating, and, basically, stupid.
This was the season of Supertrain, Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, Hello Larry and Pink Lady & Jeff.

It's also unfortunate that the producers didn't bother to actually give Conrad a character to play. Sloane was Conrad,
basically, and was never shown to have any personal life, nor was there
any backstory ever revealed for the character. In the pilot film -
where the character was played by Robert Logan
- Sloane was established as an art and antiques dealer, which at least
provided him with a cover for his international travel, and provided a
little color. This appears to have been forgotten by the time of the
actual series. The character of Torque was badly used as well. A giant
with a multi-purpose cybernetic hand should have been a lot more useful
and interesting than he actually was. I don't blame actor Ji-Tu Cumbuka, though. He simply wasn't given anything much to do most of the time.

Anyway, it was fun re-visiting the series (again). I'm planning to finally review the pilot film, T.R. Sloane/Death Ray 2000 in the next week or so. Stay tuned!

It Rhymes with Lust was originally published in 1950, and is considered by some comics historians to be one of the first – if not the
first – modern graphic novel. Originally marketed as a "picture novel"
by publisher St. John Publications, it was written by comics veteran
Arnold Drake (The Doom Patrol) and novelist Leslie Waller (together using the pseudonym "Drake Waller"), with black-and-white art by Matt Baker (Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and Phantom Lady) and inker Ray Osrin. In co-author Drake's opinion, "I don't think there is much question that It Rhymes with Lust was the first graphic novel."

The
edition reviewed here is a facsimile edition published by Dark Horse
Comics, which includes an afterword by Drake, and biographies of Drake,
Waller and artist Baker.

It Rhymes With Lust deals with the machinations of malevolent femme fatale
Rust Masson, a seductive, red haired siren with an insatiable lust for
power. Upon the death of her crimelord husband, Rust moves to take full
control of the mining town Copper City – both its legal operations and
its illegal ones. As part of her scheming, she brings an ex-lover,
disillusioned and cynical reporter Hal Weber, to town and puts him into
the Editor-in-Chief's slot at one of the town's two newspapers, hoping
to use him as both a propaganda tool and intelligence agent. But,
eventually, Weber tires of being Rust's patsy, and with the more
wholesome love of Rust's own, blonde stepdaughter, Audrey, Weber finds
the strength to stand up to Rust and moves to bring down her empire.

Drake and Waller have scripted a pitch-perfect noir
potboiler, a story that deftly combines politics, crime and James M.
Cain-styled sexual manipulation into one compact package. This is very
much in the tradition of the pulp paperback fiction of the era. The
dialogue is perhaps a bit too expositional and the captions a bit too
weighty for today's tastes, but this was published in 1950, and follows
the comics writing conventions of that era.

Matt
Baker's art is exceptional. Known for his superior ability to render the
female form, Baker proves to be the perfect choice to illustrate this
tale of the archetypical femme fatale.
With her short, mannish hairstyle and impeccable fashion sense, Rust is
strongly contrasted against her idealistic stepdaughter, Audrey, with
her lush blonde mane and soft features. All the characters are
distinctive and instantly recognizable, and while the book is very
dialogue heavy, Baker manages to keep it visually interesting through
careful use of varying "camera" angles. It's superior work.

Overall, I liked It Rhymes With Lust
quite a bit. My only criticism is that Drake & Waller's story
is just a bit too talky and static. It really could have used just a
little bit more action – another fistfight or firefight would have
livened things up nicely. Definitely worth checking out, though.

Tuesday, January 06, 2015

I don't know if it was because I was groggy and watching it at four
in the morning, but I really enjoyed the penultimate episode of A Man Called Sloane, "Architect of Evil." (Original air date: December 15th, 1979.)

Worthington Pendergast (Michael Pataki)
is the titular architect, who has conceived a "perfect city" for KARTEL
to build and rule in an undisclosed location. Who will construct – and
ultimately, live in – this city? Well, Pendergast has a typically
complicated and insane plan to solve that problem: using a ray projector
that can increase the mass of objects, he intends to sink a ship
carrying nuclear waste which will then contaminate a large portion of
the West Coast of America. This will dispossess millions of people, who
KARTEL (will somehow) then draft as slave labor to build their city.

Unfortunately
for Pendergast, the unique "blue crystal" that makes the ray weapon
work, has been stolen from his home safe along with his other valuables,
by a cat burglar named Harry Helms (John Aprea),
who has no idea what it is and thinks it's worthless. Fortunately, UNIT
had Pendergast under observation and caught the thief on film, so
Sloane is able to track him down, and ultimately impersonate him (an
impersonation which, as usual, isn't very effective) in order to
infiltrate Pendergast's operation...

The story is
nonsensical, but for some reason, it plays out pretty well. Pataki's
villain is suitably over-the-top, executing his own henchmen with sonic
deathtraps and playing Bach's tocatta and fugue in D minor
on the organ to relieve stress. There's a sequence set in a health
club where burglar Helms attempts to kill Sloane in a manner highly
reminiscent of the Shrublands scene in Thunderball, and an interesting – and unusual - climax featuring Sloane, Torque, a helicopter, and a lot of soapsuds.

Well directed by veteran TV and B-movie (Cujo, Alligator) director Lewis Teague,
"Architect of Evil" is a satisfyingly silly but entertaining hour of
spy-fi adventure, and is probably one of the best in the series.

Monday, January 05, 2015

Well, stills are starting to leak out from Warner Brothers' new Man From U.N.C.L.E. film, directed by Guy Ritchie and due for an August release. I want to be excited about it, but so far, I'm not. The casting bugs me: Man Of Steel's Henry Cavill is playing Napoleon Solo, while The Lone Ranger's Armie Hammer assumes the role of Illya Kuryakin.

They're both very "Hollywood" choices - big, beefy, square-jawed heroic-looking types... but that's exactly the kind of actors that U.N.C.L.E. creators Sam Rolfe and Norman Felton didn't want to play those roles. Rolfe & Felton specifically cast Robert Vaughn and David McCallum back in the day because neither of them were beefcake types. They wanted handsome men who were of normal stature, and not the stereotypical "action" sort of guys.

I'm also concerned that the movie is another unnecessary "origin" story, showing the two agents working together for the first time, with lots of obligatory friction, before U.N.C.L.E. (the organization) is founded. The film is set in the 60s, though, so that's good.

Welcome to Atomic Pulp

Christopher Mills is a professional writer of comic books and short fiction in a variety of genres, as well as a DVD reviewer for several pop culture websites. His taste in entertainment clearly peaked when he was about 15, which certainly explains his embarrassing obsession with James Bond, hardboiled crime fiction, comic books, paperback pulps, space opera, Universal/Hammer/Toho Monsters, sword & sorcery sagas, old genre TV shows and vintage B-movies.